Packed Lunch

It’s my second week back at work and this is what I’ve got for my packed lunch today.
It consists of an apple, mini homemade scone provided by Mother of Purl (my Mum) and a sandwich bag of yarn and needles. Yum! Don’t worry I’ve not started to eat yarn for lunch, or developed a strange eating disorder, I’m meeting a friend for a spot of lunch and knitting.

The crazy times are starting to calm a little as Flo’s birthday went off without a hitch, I’m back at work and the workshop at the Creative Biscuit was lots of fun! I’ve been invited back to run an Intermediate workshop in April which I’m really looking forward to. The cafe is also running lots of other nice workshops in April so their facebook page is well worth a look . But don’t forget that they are now open for all your general tea, coffee and cake needs too, so be sure to pop in for a delicious cuppa and slice of carrot cake next time you’re in the neighbourhood.

Our house moving is imminent so I’ve started packing up my yarn stash :-(
My mum found some vacuum storage bags in the pound shop in Stratford so I’ve sucked down my stash to a reasonable size so far. The pattern books, magazines, needles and notions are starting to look like they’re taking over the flat though, so time to get packing them away too. It all feels a bit sad!

Finally I just want to share with you the totally scrumptious crumble I made this weekend. I had a couple of bags of plums in my freezer left over from the Autumn when my parents garden suddenly over flows with gorgeous fruits. As we’re trying to run the freezer down before the move I decided that they needed to be used and as always Nigella came to the rescue! From How to Be a Domestic Goddess her Plum and Pecan Crumble was delicious and was enjoyed after a family dinner this weekend. I shall definitely come back to this recipe again!

A Royal Yarn

The lovely people at Fyberspates have come up with a Royal Wedding commemoration with a twist. Instead of the royal couple’s faces on a plate, cup or even old school ash tray you can now get your own limited edition Royal Wedding yarn. Dyed in a gorgeous sapphire colour to match the engagement ring the hank of lace yarn comes in a special presentation box with a certificate. I love the idea of this and that there will soon be a pattern to compliment the yarn so you can swan about like a newly made princess. What, what? Summon the butler!

Cake Crisis Averted

It was Flo’s first birthday last week and we had an amazing time with the smiley girl who really loved all the attention and presents; she’s just like her mother.

I decided to make her a cake in the shape of a big number 1 which didn’t go exactly to plan. The recipe/ construction idea came from an old Children’s party cake book my Mum has had since the 80’s from Australian Women’s Weekly. I have no idea why she has an Australian cake book but it seems that a few other people know of this book’s amazing novelty cakes so it must have been very popular at the time. When I was growing up this was the holy grail of cake books and each year I would help my Mum pick one out for my birthday and watch as she made the sugary magic happen. So I was very excited to be able to borrow the book for Flo’s very first birthday cake.

The book suggests you use two loaf tins measuring 10x3inches. My loaf tins were no where near this long and thin, so I made the crazy decision of using a roasting tin to make a huge sponge that I would then cut up to make the various shapes needed for the number 1 cake. Oh, how wrong I was. Not only was there not enough cake mix to make a suitably tall enough cake but the shaped base of the roasting tin meant that the mixture stuck and so when I turned it out this happened:

Thankfully I made this fatal cake error the night before Flo’s party and so has time to quickly ran out and buy some loaf tins and ingredients to re-bake the cake. I had to make do with the normal size of loaf tin and do a bit of a dodgy cutting job to get it to look like a number 1 but once covered in icing and loads of Smarties it turned out to look really good. Phew!

Cake crisis aside this past year has been a real whirlwind for our little family. Flo’s arrival into the world was not what we had hoped when we thought of the birth of our first baby. There were no balloons, presents, congratulations or happy tears and so I’m so glad that her first birthday was all of those things that we missed and more. Our friends and family were finally all able to get together over our little girl and welcome her into the world properly and for this I am so grateful. Happy Birthday Florence and here’s to many more.

Liebster

The lovely Moss Stitch has given me an award! I feel so honoured!

The Liebster blog award is given to blogs with a small number of followers, I guess in order to promote these blogs and get more support for them; the word translates as 'dearest' in German. Once you receive the Liebster award you get to pass it on to several other blogs with less than 300 followers. These are the blogs that I consider to be worthy of such a lovely award:

Keston Kitchen is a great foodie blog, with reviews and recipes that will make you hungry, so beware!

Purl Alpaca Designs is the blog from the knitting kit specialist. I love their designs so like to keep an eye on what they're up to.

Handmade Lives is written by Dixie Nichols of Nichols Buttons. It's all about fabulous crafty people.

Coconutboots is a film and book review blog from one of my good friends.

Congratulations guys!

Crazy Times

Things have gone crazy in the last few weeks and suddenly everything is happening at once!

We need to move home as our landlady needs our flat back, so I am occupied with finding somewhere to live that will have enough room for all my yarn. The extensive yarn/ craft cupboard I currently have will be hard to beat and I will miss it dearly. I also am slightly worried that the Mr might have something to say when there’s more moving boxes marked ‘Yarn’ than anything else in the moving van.

I’m going back to work in a couple of week, just part time, but the thought of having to use my brain in a logical way again is quite daunting. Trying to slot back into things after a whole year without work seems like an impossible task but I know it will be a positive thing for our little family.

Some very exciting news is that I will be teaching knitting classes again! The Creative Biscuit is a local and very cute ceramics cafe. Apart from having ceramics painting they also run classes like jewellery making, have a book club and importantly serve tea, coffee and cake! My Beginners Knitting Workshop will be the latest edition to their crafty repertoire and we will be learning to make a simple garter stitch hairband. Here it is modelled by me and then by Flo, who wasn't too happy about being a model.

In other news I managed to finish my Hap blanket! I’m really pleased with it and it’s lovely and cosy. The only question now is what to knit next?

The most earth shatteringly crazy thing that’s happening at the moment is that Florence is turning 1 year old next week! It’s so difficult to believe that a whole year has passed since she arrived, but it’s amazing, given her extremely rough start, that she is thriving as well as she is. We will be of course having a party, with cake, next weekend, so it will be all stations go on party food and birthday cake making duties. Phew, crazy times indeed!

Greg Wallace, Now That's True Love

Happy Valentines day!

This year I haven't been sucked into the whole Valentines day present thing and so got the Mr a nice card and a kiss instead of a present. I didn't bank on getting a gift myself, so was totally blown away by a personalised Greg Wallace (of Masterchef and greengrocer fame) apron, which is perfect for my continuing baking adventures.

The Mr and I love to watch Masterchef and are so excited that it's starting up again on Wednesday this week. The best part of the show is when Greg comes out with his amazing one liners which you can read tons of on this amazing facebook page which is dedicated to them. My favourite one so far has to be "Give me a cup of tea and I'll finish it" which is now on my baking apron, spurring me on to bake treats that even Greg would be proud of. Although to be fair I think he would happily tuck into a flan that had fallen on the floor.

This weekend I went on a little road trip with my friend Dr Stitchlove to Portsmouth see our preggers friend Startitis. She's been knitting away for the arrival of her little one and I had to take a picture of this AMAZING creation. I just love the little squirrels around the yolk and the colours work so well with the design. This knit is made all the more amazing by the fact that the pattern was entirely in Dutch! Well done Startitis and thanks for the yummy cakes too.

How did we do?

Pointless was a mixed experience. We spent the first day doing nothing as we were last to know if we’d get on the show or not. I shudder to think that I almost didn’t bring my knitting with me as the Hap blanket has become rather cumbersome of late and I didn’t want the extra baggage. Thankfully my common sense came back to me and so the 9 hours we spent sitting in the green room were well spent making some good progress on the border to the blanket.

On the second day at the BBC we did get on the show but we can’t tell you how far we got, so you’ll have to wait until it’s on TV to see if we won or not! I should know the exact date that the show will be on BBC2 nearer the time, so watch this space around March and see me and my sister in law do our best to get a Pointless trophy.

Oh, and the only on-set gossip I have is that Richard, the guy that sits behind the desk with all the answers, is ENORMOUS. He’s literally a giant, which is probably why they’ve sat him behind a desk.

In other news Flo received a very belated Christmas present from some lovely friends last weekend of a beautiful hand knit jumper. I just love the colour combination and I can’t get over how nicely the sewing up has been done! If only I had those skills. The jumper was bought from a local shop called Knock Down Ginger and was knitted by someone local. If that was you then I’d like to know your sewing up secrets please?!?

Note to self: child safe googly eyes for stuffed toys are not child safe! Wilbur the whale sadly had his eye bitten of this week and luckily I caught Florence before she could choke on it. He will now be a decorative whale on a high up shelf rather than a hands on kind of whale.